UK regulators raise radiation risk from tritium
Date: 30-May-02
Country: UK
People eating fish contaminated with tritium, an isotope of hydrogen and a by-product of nuclear fusion, face twice the dose of radiation as assumed in the past, the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) said.
Vast quantities of tritium were released into the atmosphere by hydrogen bomb tests in the 1960s, and more of the isotope could be produced if scientists manage to develop "cold" nuclear fusion as a power source.
The NRPB stressed that although the risk was doubled, it was still very small. "People should not be particularly concerned about this," board spokesman John Harrison told New Scientist magazine.
But medical experts questioned the safety of eating fish caught near centres of tritium pollution.
The discovery of fish containing hundreds of times more tritium than expected near a factory in Cardiff, Wales, triggered the NRPB to examine the dangers of eating fish caught in the nearby Severn estuary.
"The finding could have significant implications for people who eat a lot of fish from around the Cardiff plant," Barrie Lambert, a radiation expert from St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, told the magazine.